contd.

The question remains, what was the role department's audit committee and its auditors? What about governance? What about risk analysis?

You are angry about the treatment of fathers and you should be. As a citizen I find it completely outrageous and indefensible that despite the millions that have been poured into trying to improve governance, accountability, transparency and value for money over decades (not to mention the money given to the CSA for improvements) such shabby management and lack of governance is still present in this department and seemingly no one has been made accountable.

You should draft a letter and send it by snail mail (they don't read email) to ALL members of the new parliament asking what will be done to make decision makers responsible and accountable for the continuing mismanagement and wastage of public funds.

benk:"Anyone who lies to substantially increase the amount of child support they receive or to substantially reduce the amount they pay should be charged with fraud."

Nice theory, but do I want the mother of my children charged with fraud and potentially being unable to continue in her career? Is that good for the kids?

If the CSA's involvement leads some people to act fraudulently, then don't involve the CSA in the first place.

Pelican:"Don't hold your breath for an apology from the bureaucrats or the politicians"

I don't need to, I've already got one, but I've had to take an awfully large drop in living standard as well as lost business opportunites and other consequences as well as spend a great deal of my time over many years fighting this disgraceful organisation.

Pelican:"I can imagine working at a place like the CSA would be a minefield "

I disagree. The law is pretty straightforward, it's the policy directions set by the National Executive and rubber-stamped by the succession of third-raters put in as Minister that have caused the problem. The culture of corruption and high-handed application of coercive powers aimed exclusively at fathers is a product of the ideological bias of those in charge, as well as a grossly incompetent quality assurance process. I'm a pretty easy-going bloke, but the casual misuse of power I have experienced from the CSA got my back up very badly. I want those individual senior bureaucrats to be held to individual account.

R0bert, a non-discriminatory levy could be applied to pay for the public good that is represented by the proper care of subsequent generations. Let the ATO administer collections as they do now for other taxes and levies and have Centrelink administer it in their normal way. The CSA is redundant and staffed by incompetents and ideologues. There are requirements under the Public Service Act that members of the APS act with due diligence to ensure that their substantive actions are ethical, fair, transparent, accurate and do not cause disadvantage. The CSA fails to fulfil these obligations systematically.

[cont]

Cornflower, thanks for that link to the Building a Better CSA guff. While it shows how little attention the CSA pay to their own propaganda, it was itself a mere effort at window-dressing the woeful state the Agency was allowed to attain under Catherine Argall and Sheila Bird, which culminated in the sacking of huge numbers of staff for accessing CSA files for either their own ex's case or for friends.

The rot was set a long way into the core of this particular apple a long time before Matt Miller was hired from Fair Trading Queensland to try to turn it all into sweet-smelling cider. That he failed is no real surprise. It must have been like walkng through molasses to try to effect change in such a deeply-flawed organisation, where so many had built their careers on the fact that they never had to justify anything they did and so much of what they did consisted of stitching men up as a matter of course.

This is going to run a long way yet, Cornflower. I'll do as you suggest in writing, I think.

Antiseptic,
Good luck with trying to reform a government department. I feel for you with the pain these people have clearly caused you. I simply gave up without much effort as i had three children to raise and the oldest has a disability so my personal energy could only stretch so far and the CSA just didn't matter enough.
I know i am on the other end of the spectrum than your self but with the risk of sounding moralistic (and anyone that reads my post you know i am no moralist) I really think that our community and parents in general need to take the act of becoming a parent much more seriously. Children are not a right nor a financial gain. Enough baby bonuses big PPS payments and excuses to shove our kids into child care so my career dosen't suffer. tough for the liberationists if it costs children a family and stable development. It is all a reflection of the selfish greed that has come to represent the ME generation.

Dear Antiseptic,

I don't know if this will help - however
I came across the following website:

http://www.mensrights.com.au/

There's a few other links on the website that
may also be of interest.

nairbe:"I simply gave up without much effort as i had three children to raise and the oldest has a disability so my personal energy could only stretch so far and the CSA just didn't matter enough."

If the CSA had simply done the minimum needed to produce a fair, accurate assessment instead of allowing themselves to be used as a weapon by my ex then I would have done the same. I did do the same for the first 4 years I had to deal with them, putting up with the petty dishonesties and the constant implication that I was an inadequate parent. The very first time I spoke to the Agency, I asked why the assessment notice I had received was backdated to a month before we separated and instead of an answer I got "there's nothing I can do about it now, you'll have to go to Court if you want it changed". When I said that doesn't seem reasonable I got "look, we know what you're about, just pay up. Don't you care about your kids?" When I tried to say that I had been paying the ex all along, I was told "no you haven't, I've got your file in front of me and it doesn't say anything about that".

Since this was only a month or so after we separated, I let it all slide and allowed myself to be bullied into shutting up, but it just got worse. The ex kept filing Change of Assessment applications, usually at the same time as she filed the next Court application seeking greater custody and the CSA just kept accepting them, despite nothing having changed in either of our circumstances. Each time I had to provide all of my financial records to them and submit to an interrogation, while the ex was not required to do anything at all except say "I think he's able to earn more than he is" while she sat on her backside drawing a Government benefit, living in Government housing.